Providence St. Joseph Health announced plans Thursday to acquire Bluetree, an Epic consulting and strategy company that helps healthcare providers maximize their return on their electronic health record investment. With the addition of Bluetree, the Renton, Washington-based health system now has two of the top EHR solutions companies in the country.

WASHINGTON—When talk turns to disruption or innovation, the first thing one might consider is new technology. But for startup health plan Bright Health, it starts with the underlying business case, said Kyle Rolfing, the company’s co-founder, during a panel discussion at the World Health Care Congress.

Under the expansion plan, Philips will provide telehealth technology, while Walmart will offer its telehealth stations to the initiative. Also, T-Mobile will provide 70,000 lines of wireless service to the healthcare providers and support staff across all VA hospitals, clinics and outpatient facilities around the nation.

The modernization project will have ongoing innovation and health information exchanges among military and Veteran care facilities and thousands of civilian health care providers throughout the program.

The goal is to support an interactive data ecosystem to speed up improvement in the healthcare sector. The both nonprofit health IT groups hope to strengthen public-private partnerships and advance policy, starting by collaborating on the next

Two of the largest EHR vendors have conflicting plans for 2018, with Allscripts broadening its product portfolio while Cerner is focusing on two landmark EHR modernizations that could have industry-wide gravitational pull.

Email attacks such as phishing and ransomware can be prevented in health systems by using the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance Standard (DRMAC) but research shows only 1.7 percent of large healthcare organizations successfully use them.